To Stop Being Played as a Chump, Turn Off the CNN/MSM

If you want to stop being played as a chump, turn off the CNN/MSM and disengage from the self-referential social media distraction.

Let’s start by asking: if Trump had lost and his supporters had angrily taken to the streets, destroying private property and threatening police officers while proclaiming “not my president,” would the mainstream media have characterized the rioters differently than it has the pro-Clinton rioters?

Any fair-minded observer knows the answer is yes: the CNN/MSM would have lambasted the “rioting deplorables” as “what’s wrong with America.”

Substitution is a useful tool to expose bias. How come the CNN/mainstream corporate media isn’t declaring the pro-Clinton rioters “deplorables”?

This tells us something else is going on here. I want to explain what’s really going on, but first, we need to run a simple experiment:

Turn off CNN, PBS, CBS et al., your Twitter and Facebook feeds, etc. for seven days, and live solely in the media-free real world for a week. If you’re truly interested in understanding what’s really going on in America, then come back in a week and read the rest of the essay.

Have you pulled out the CNN/MSM/social media fearmongering/propaganda dripline for a few days? This is a necessary step, as we shall soon see.

Everyone who is consuming CNN/MSM/ self-referential social media every waking hour is being played as chumps. Start by asking yourself: cui bono–to whose benefit? Who is benefiting from the ceaseless fearmongering of the CNN/social-media-parroting mainstream corporate media?

(Longtime readers know I start any analysis by asking cui bono.)

Two Power Elites have benefited enormously from the ceaseless media fearmongering: the owners of the corporate media spewing the fear mongering, and the Neoliberal camp of the Ruling Elite.

The hysterical tone of the fearmongering serves the agenda of the Neoliberals, who are desperate to maintain their grip on power.

As I have endeavored to explain over the past few years, America’s Deep State no longer enjoys a monolithic unity of worldview and narrative. The Deep State has fragmented into two conflicted camps: the Neoconservatives, who espouse the globalist, interventionist foreign policy manifestation of Neoliberalism, and a smaller, more forward-looking camp that understands Neoliberalism is actively undermining our national security and our core national interests.

This split in the Deep State extends into the entire Ruling Elite. Thus we have the currently dominant globalist Neoliberal camp personified by the Clintons, the Corporatocracy that has funded them, the clubby Washington Elites (Demopublicans) and the Neocon camp of the Deep State.

The opposing camp of Elite “outsiders” is viewed as the enemy which threatens the wealth and power of the self-serving Neoliberal Elites. Longtime readers have seen many accounts here over the years that explain the key dynamic of Elite fragmentation: as self-serving personal aggrandizement poisons the values of public service, the Elite splinters into a parasitic, predatory self-serving majority and an Elite minority that sees the inevitable dissolution of the empire should the self-serving few continue their predation of the many.

Here are a few of the many essays I’ve posted on this key dynamic. Please read a few of these for context if you missed them the first time around:

Elite fragmentation is the core dynamic in play in America. The Neoliberal class, personified by the Clintons and the rest of the incestuous Washington Elite (Demopublicans), has used the self-serving corporate media to whip up a frenzy of hysteria that is ultimately aimed at the Elite camp that opposes their self-aggrandizement at the expense of the nation.

This war within America’s Power Elite is for all the marbles. This explains the absurd urgency of the CNN/MSM fearmongering propaganda.

Let’s deconstruct one of the many hysterical claims of the CNN/MSM: Trump’s victory is a coup d’etat. This absurd claim is akin to “the Martians are coming!” Right out of the gate, it is a clueless misuse of the term coup d’etat. If you actually want to understand the term, as opposed to using it to whip up hysteria that profits the Corporate owners of CNN/MSM, then start by reading the 1968 classic Coup d’État: A Practical Handbook by Edward Luttwak, and then move on to The Quiet Coup by Simon Johnson (2010).

The financial coup d’etat occurred in the presidency of Democrat Bill Clinton when the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed, freeing the predatory financial elites to plunder the nation.

Presidents G.W. Bush and Obama institutionalized the coup by bailing out the banks post-2008.

So who does all the fearmongering benefit? The CNN/MSM, which profited immensely, and the Neoliberal Elite, which distracted the populace from the fatal consequences of its dominance.

The mainstream media in America is a corporate-owned media, or in the case of PBS, corporate-funded via sponsorships. Advertising rates are set by the size of the audience and the number of hours they consume the broadcast/feed.

The MSM’s fearmongering propaganda greatly expanded the number of eyeballs glued to their product and increased the duration of consumers’ time spent online. This increase in audience/duration has been immensely profitable to the corporate media, which has relied on fearmongering to drive audience since 9/11.